This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a dystopia film with the end of the world approaching but not due to some kind of giant twister or meteorite attack. No, this time it’s because the world just isn’t generating new humans anymore and so that’s an interesting take but this is more of a dreary kind of adventure as opposed to a thrilling escape film on trying to find a way to survive. It brings up some interesting ideas but ultimately couldn’t quite turn the corner.

The movie starts off by explaining the plot. At some point women stopped being able to get pregnant and the cause of this was unknown. It could have been anything from radiation, vaccines, just a natural end to this cycle, etc. Regardless of the cause, that means humanity will slowly begin dying out soon. Just about every country on the planet has fallen except for the United Kingdom and so there is a huge immigration issue. Everyone wants to go there and so they have basically shut the kingdom off and all immigrants are basically treated like slaves.

The film centers around Theo who has a fairly good job and likes to keep things low key. He stays out of the media and plays along with what people consider to be big events like the world’s youngest person dying but he doesn’t really care about any of that. One day he is kidnapped by his wife or ex-wife…I forget if they had split up or not officially but she is now a high ranking member of a terrorist organization. Why does she want him? Well there is a girl named Kee that they are trying to protect and they need Theo’s help. She doesn’t actually trust the other terrorists so he is her absolute last resort play. Theo doesn’t want to help but circumstances basically force him into the picture. Can he protect her?

Theo doesn’t exactly have much combat training or anything so it won’t be easy. Additionally, there is a specific reason why Kee is a super big priority target for just about every force on the planet. There are tons of people who want her for both good and bad reasons. That means there is now a big target on Theo’s back. He does suggest at one point that they should turn themselves in but this is the only area where I have to agree with the villains in thinking that this is a bad idea. I have no doubt that she would immediately be experimented on and would effectively lose her freedom/life in short order.

There are no great solutions to this though. One idea is keeping her in hiding for say 10-20 years so you can show off certain results with a bit more safety also in hopes that other people appear or you make her a central figurehead for the terrorist group from a safe location. I’m not sure exactly where would be considered safe at this point though and even if it appears to be for a good cause…I don’t think anybody would want to be the figure head for a terrorist group.

As with most of the dilemmas in this film, your only choices tend to be bad or worse. Theo has one real friend in the film who is an old guy trying to take care of his sickly wife and from the jump with this kind of film you know that’s not going to go over very well. I don’t even get the logic of his final scene. The guy was super prepared for everything including poison pills and lots of other kinds of things so at least he wouldn’t be captured and tortured. There is even a plot element to this involving the past which explains why he would want to be wary of such a thing. Yet when his time comes, he only gives two others the poison pills and doesn’t take any safe guards for himself. If anything he actually gets off really lucky here comparatively speaking.

Aside from making things rougher on Theo this just didn’t make sense. There are lots of scenes in the film that are pretty much here to remind you how bad the world has gotten. People are being led up to a firing squad, the whole being tortured as a backstory, we see the bad living conditions, everyone starts dying near the end, etc. Even with the ending I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a very positive one. You have to assume that while things may get marginally better later on, they may not.

In a way the whole film follows this theme of hopelessness. At the end of the day no matter what the characters choose to do, they’re all going to die soon. There is no saving the world or some big enemy to defeat. Every person who gets murdered during this adventure is just one person leaving early but everyone will eventually be dying with no heirs to continue. The first half of the film is much more interesting in that sense though as it’s interesting to see what happens but once we enter the thriller aspects it’s ironically not as engaging. It’s more of a classic everyone getting shot and running through the destroyed towns but it’s all rather gritty and not meant to be very fun. Everyone’s constantly in pain and the film does give us a rather long birthing scene which makes sense as it could be the last one ever seen but I’d still have rather that had beem off screen as it always looks and sounds so painful.

Meanwhile the ending only holds hope for the world if the circumstances with Kee can be reproduced. If they are unable to figure that out then it won’t matter. Even if they do figure it out, if the circumstances are not practical then it won’t matter there either. So there’s a lot of ways this could go sideways and only a few possible positive routes. Personally I don’t see it working out, the world is way too far gone. At this point even if things do start to turn, society itself may as well be collapsed.

Theo isn’t a particularly good main character either way. The guy comes across as selfish and it takes a whole long time for him to get on board. He doesn’t care about much which is fine but it also means that it basically takes the most extreme of circumstances to get him to do anything like a lot of money. I can’t say I was a big fan of Julian either though. She feels a bit manipulative. It doesn’t look like she actually likes Theo all that much but was just using him for her own means which was risky in itself.

Kee was a good character. She was really thrown into a really tricky situation and did her best but this was probably the roughest for her in a lot of ways. When you’re just trying to survive but going through an ordeal nobody even knows about, that has to be pretty rough. Then we have Luke who is one of the more interesting characters. Definitely the kind of guy who can really turn on a dime though so you can’t really trust him at all. The guy shows some warning signs right out of the gate and they only get worse. From his point of view it probably all seems worth it like he has to do it but there’s no way to really justify his actions.

The worst character would have to be Syd though because in the end he’s just a really greedy guy who will absolutely turn on his own convictions for the right price. In a lot of ways he’s worse than someone like Luke who at least has a logic to his actions. I don’t believe that Luke could ever be bought by anyone while Syd is just too weak. The guy’s annoying because there were such high hopes for him.

Overall, I think Children of Men is a very interesting film. There are definitely many parts to it that feel really realistic and if the planet did ever enter a period where children could not be born anymore, I expect there would be massive chaos. It would be like knowing that everyone was going to die soon and not being able to do anything about it. Society absolutely would collapse and it’s a scary thing to think about. So while it is a very interesting writing prompt, it doesn’t work as well in a movie like this. It’s just more depressing than anything with no real breaks. It can get rather disturbing and even a little violent as well. I would have preferred a film that focused more on the societal impacts from the government’s point of view like a drama version of this without the thriller aspects. Even the most kind people would have a lot of things to worry about if they’re the youngest and know that nobody will be around to take care of them when they get old. So I don’t recommend the film but the plot is very unique and if you’re curious about diving in, the film has no shortage of traumatic imagery to present to you.

Overall 3/10